- Terrorism and Political Violence

Catalog description

Political violence, including terrorism, has been around since the beginnings of organized political society, though the word terrorism dates only from the French Revolution (1789-1799). In this course, we will explore what terrorism is, whether it is new (and why some analysts argue it is), who uses terrorist tactics, why they do so, and how terrorism differs from other forms of political violence such as war, insurgency, and so on. We will investigate various definitions of terrorism. Most scholars think that terrorism is not a random act of violence. They see terrorism as planned and, for those who use it, rational. However, there is still a lot of disagreement on what terrorism is, what motivates terrorists, how it can be fought, and on what we mean by rational and planned. We will compare the various definitions and perspectives to determine which might work best for our understanding of the phenomena. In addition, we will focus on some key concepts in the discipline of political science and how they relate to terrorism, for example: power, ethnicity, religion, and the media.